chocolate

Posts taggedwith chocolate

Anyone who’s looked down and realized their plate is all beige has felt the full force of the role of color in what we eat. Universal Favourite takes the visual element to another level with their modular Complements chocolate. The Australian design studio created the project as a client gift and developed it into a collaboration with sweets experts Bakedown Cakery. Each modular staircase-shaped chocolate (blackcurrant, cherry, cookies and cream, fairy floss, lemon, matcha, pistachio, shortbread, single origin dark, strawberry, vanilla, and watermelon) fits together with a complementary flavor to form a very visually appealing cube. Bakedown also shares their handiwork on Instagram, as does Universal Favourite. (via Ignant)

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Glass artist Shayna Leib (previously), like anyone, is deeply attracted to the seductive pull of decadent desserts. Unlike most however, Leib is unable to indulge. Her body reacts to several aspects of puffed pastries and chocolate mouses, causing her to have many severe dietary restrictions. It was this void that pulled her towards the desire to work with the unattainable, to recreate the objects she couldn’t eat.

“This body of work started as a therapeutic exercise in deconstruction and a re-training of the mind to look at dessert as form rather than food,” says Leib in an artist statement about her series Patisserie. “It soon became a technical riddle, and I became a food taxidermist of french pastries.”

To create the glossy sculptures she combines elements of porcelain and glass, utilizing nearly every technique for both to achieve the hyperrealistic quality of each faux dessert. Like a typical French pastry would be rolled, glazed, baked, and trimmed, Leib hot-sculpts, fuses, casts, grinds, throws, and even pipes with a theme-appropriate pastry tube. You can view more of her sweet imitations on her website, Instagram, and Facebook.

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Six months in the making, these enormous chocolate-covered rock candy geodes are the creation of culinary students Alex Yeatts and Abby Lee Wilcox, the results of a final project for the Culinary Institute of America in New York. Details are scarce on how the duo went about creating the giant sugar rocks, some of which have the distinct hue of purple amethyst. The calorie count is also elusive, but we can only imagine it equates to the years these things take to form in real life. (via Sploid)

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When looking at a case of pastries in a bakery it’s usually possible to intuit what something might taste like because of its familiar shape or color. Such is not the case with these radically unusual cake designs by Ukrainian pastry chef Dinara Kasko whose experimental techniques result in edible objects unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

Most of her creations would look just fine sitting on a pedestal inside a contemporary art museum, but surprisingly everything you see here is completely edible. Kasko actively works math into her creations, incorporating principles like the Voroni method or utilizing 3D modeling and printing to create different cakes or silicone molds. If the cake shapes are unfamiliar, it might be easier to relate to some of the ingredients she uses like sponge cake, chocolate mousse, berry confit, shortcrust dough, and meringue.

A number of the pieces seen here were created for an article in the February issue of So Good pastry magazine, more photos of which you can find on Instagram. (via Quipsologies)

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French director and animator Alexandre Dubosc (previously) returns with his latest quirky confection, a towering animated zoetrope cake called Melting POP. This really defies any meaningful description, so just give it a watch and smile. And if you liked this, there’s quite a few more.

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Japanese design office Nendo has created 9 different types of chocolate. While each are the same size, not a single piece from the Chocolatexture collection look alike. That’s because Oki Sato, who leads the Tokyo and Milan-based firm, rethought the concept of chocolate by focusing on texture. “There are many factors that determine a chocolate’s taste,” says Sato, referring to factors like the origin of cocoa, the percentage used, and the various different flavors. But by instead turning his attention to attributes like pointy, smooth and rough, the designer has created distinctive chocolates that all use identical ingredients but taste completely different due to the various textures.

Each of the 9 chocolates were inspired by an onomatopoeic word from the Japanese language that describes texture. The chocolates correspond with words like “toge toge” (sharp pointy tips), “sube sube” (smooth edges and corners) and “zara zara” (granular, like a file). Chocolatexture was created for the Maison & Objet trade fair currently taking place this week in Paris. 400 limited edition Chocolatexture sets were created and will be sold during the event in Paris at what’s being dubbed the “Chocolatexture lounge.” (syndicated from Spoon & Tamago)

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Illustrator and designer Akihiro Mizuuchi designed a modular system for creating edible chocolate LEGO bricks. Chocolate is first poured into precisely designed moulds that after cooling can be popped out and used as regular LEGOs. It’s hard to determine exactly how functional they are, it seems like he had success in building a number of different things, though I can only imagine how quickly they might melt in your hands, but I suppose that’s beside the point; this is two of the greatest things in the world fused together. If you google around there are numerous attempts at creating various forms of LEGO in chocolate or other food, but this appears to be the most detailed and well-designed of anything out there. (via Legosaurus)